Focused - 6: The Shawshank Redemption, with Shahid Kamal Ahmad

Episode Date: October 4, 2016

PlayStation veteran Shahid Kamal Ahmad left Sony to become an independent game developer. We discuss why he left and how he schedules his workday in his garden shed, the ShaShed.

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm Jason Snell, and I'm joined by my fellow host, David Sparks. Hi, David. Hi, Jason. This is one of our interview episodes, and our subject today, the person we're going to be talking to,

was at PlayStation for a decade, and now he is an independent worker. It is the co-host of Remaster on RelayFM, Shahid Kamal Ahmad. Shahid, welcome. Oh, it's just so wonderful to be here. I'm really privileged to be invited. Thank you so much. I wanted to talk to you because, I mean, this is the story, right? When you started doing Remaster, it was this, you know, you emerged from out of PlayStation, You know, you emerged from out of PlayStation, where you'd been working with developers for a decade, like I said, and then you left. And am I wrong in saying you, well, I'll let you say it.

Why did you decide to leave? I was jealous. I was working with all of these independent developers who were living the life that I left behind back in the 1980s. Because I, too, wasn't independent back in the 1980s, but I was too young to know how to handle it. So I entered a life of corporate servitude or close to it, and I served a 25-year sentence before breaking out. I have to say, it felt like the Shawshank Redemption. When I finally left, I stood in the garden one night, and I literally twirled my arms around and around. Sadly, it wasn't raining, and I wasn't covered in the contents of a sewer pipe.

But nevertheless, it felt... Did you climb through a mile of sewer pipe first? It felt like it. It felt like 25 miles of it, put it that way. It was incredibly liberating. So I use the term jealousy. I wasn't actually jealous. I was so happy to see so many people do well.

But what started to happen was I felt, you know what? I left something behind. I think I've done a pretty good job at playstation i can leave with my head held high uh having i think contributed in a way i didn't think i was going to contribute in the first few years of my employment with playstation because i was very frustrated i was always a maverick i was never able to beat out the independent within. And so it's interesting, towards the end of my time with PlayStation, I was able to employ my maverick

streak to the benefit of the company. Because by that time, I'd also understood how to work just within the boundaries of corporate acceptability. You know, there are things that you do and you don't do. There are actions that you take to advance and others that can hold you up. And I kind of learned how the game worked. Not completely. I mean, I didn't necessarily like it 100%, but I learned how it worked. And I thought, you know what, I can do this. Let's just treat this like a skill, like any other skill that you've got to learn, how to stay within the bounds and not get fired, you know? And then I thought, okay, how about learning how to do really well? Let's see if I can actually win at this game.

And boy, did I get to win in a way that I never expected. And suddenly it got to a point where I thought, oh my God, I could really move up within this organisation. I could continue to do that. But if I do that, at age 50, I've got to make a call here. I might be leaving everything behind. All the other things that I was still holding on to that I felt were really dear to me and precious, you know, that independent life, being able to control your schedule, being able to control your whereabouts, being the master of your diary, all of these things, but mainly to be able to create again and to be able to enjoy that process of creation and not have to continually hand over your soul, which is what

it felt like, and take on the identity of something that really didn't have a face, you know? A corporation doesn't really have a face. People within the corporation become its face. So I tried this experiment, which was, what happens if you expose the corporation in a really friendly way? You almost personify the corporation. You bring the corporation to life through individuals so i i started to do stuff on twitter you know talk about what i was doing on twitter and at first it wasn't appreciated very much and in the end it became like core activity in fact my boss said you know you're doing such a good job of this you should put it down in your job description

and suddenly it this enormous bland faceless entity became personable, approachable, and so on. And that was just the maverick in me, you know. And I thought, I can carry on doing this, or I can go back to the life that I always wanted to have. And I really think I've learned enough to do that. And I made that call. There were a number of factors that went into my eventual decision. But really, it was just that pull and tug of the early years. You know, the thing that's fascinating to me there is how do

you dislodge yourself? Because by your own description, you got really good at manipulating and playing the machine. And that becomes its own kind of reward. And you get your own, you know, the carrots come out the bottom. And that's a very easy trap to fall into and you never get out of it. How did you get yourself out of that? It was extremely hard because what happened is as you so rightly identify, I pretty much become a company man. You know, I never thought I would become that, but I became a company man and I did it without selling my soul. I know earlier I said that I felt like I would become that, but I became a company man and I did it without selling my soul. I know earlier I said that I felt like I was handing over my soul. Now, if I'd stayed, that would have been it. It would have been handing over my soul. And that was it. That was a question I asked myself. To get to the next level, which was achievable, which was possible, which had been hinted at by executive management,

which was possible, which had been hinted at by executive management, because they saw me as a rising star. They talked about talent management and so on and included me in that category. And I felt very honored and flattered by that because, you know, I still have a love for that company that I'm never going to be able to shake off. I still identify very strongly with that company. And I don't think that's going to go away. It's okay. You don't have to shake it off. It's okay. No, I guess not. I guess not. But it was a very, very tough call. You know, I'd invested 10 years of my life in this place. And suddenly I was getting the rewards. I'd found the carrots, as you'd said. And they tasted damn good, man. I mean, they were amazing carrots. And I thought, do I really want to become the person that I would have to become to get to the next level? And do I want to be doing the things that that person is going to do?

Or do I want to pack it all in while I'm at the top? Because it felt like I was at the top at that time. But as you all know, tops very soon become plateaus. And I thought, you know, the thing that switched things for me, I actually did a pros and cons list. I broke this down into great detail because I thought, you know, I can't make an emotional decision about this. I have a family. You know, I have kids of all age ranges. I have a young child. I have two much more grown up children. And I thought I'm going to have to sacrifice time with my family. time with my family. I added up the amount of time traveling. And I've listened to some of the earlier podcasts in Free Agents. And you made the point about the travel time having pros and cons.

And for me, there was never a pro to travel time, because it was impossible. You know, public transport here is so poor, you are so crowded. And I added up the hours. And it was over the course of a year, if I didn't have to travel, if I didn't have to include, you know, that you go through this phase shift of beginning to prepare mentally for work. But it's not just that. When you arrive at work, you go through a phase shift as well. There is an arrival phase shift that takes maybe, I don't know anyone who rocks right up, sits straight down at the desk and is immediately productive. Nobody. Everybody has a little ritual and it might take 5, 10, 15 minutes, but you add that up over 220 working days a year,

that's a lot of time. And in my case, it was 100 working days a year allocated entirely to the rituals of travel and preparation and depreparation from travel. And I thought, if I put 50 extra working days into my own business, and 50 extra working days into spending time with my family, why am I even thinking about this decision? And that's when I decided. It's interesting, because you thought about it on time as opposed to money, because money is usually the tipping point for people. Yeah, money was not the driver for me ever. Actually, no, that's a lie. I'm sorry. In my early days, I guess money was important to me because money meant cool stuff. And eventually, what became important to me was experiences and the things that, you know, when you get to 50,

you think, what would I have missed out on? And you think about the things that you would really value. And time with your children is right up there. Time with your family is right up there. And there are a whole load of things that are not right up there. And one of the things that was not right up there was riding a train and fighting for a seat just so that I could stick my headphones on and lose myself in a podcast or a motivational book. I have to say your story, it really hits me because it sounds very much like my story. It's the same. I had some flashbacks there, your same journey. And the time

is definitely a part of it. It's also true. I wanted to go back to something you said, a part of it that that's it's also true i wanted to go back to something you said because i'm fascinated by this you said when when you were independent earlier you were too young to know how to handle it what is that what do you mean by that i got into video games in 1982 and i released my first video game in 1982 i self-published it when i didn't even know what self-publishing was all i did was I made a game. I saw other people were putting commercials, print copy commercials in the back of a weekly magazine for about five pounds for a classified advert. So I did that and I duplicated a tape made of my game written in Atari Basic. And that was how I began. So really, there was no business. There was no concept of career. In fact, nobody knew that video games would ever become an industry at this point.

It was that early on. So I was just enjoying myself. I was learning the skill. The reason I loved it so much was because programming felt to me like an escape, a complete escape to a just reality. Because when your code messed up, you knew it was you. And I grew up abused very heavily, mostly racially, but other forms as well, which I'd rather not go into in too much graphic detail. But bullying was there, beatings were there, racial nonsense, so on. So it was a very, very dark childhood. I remember some highlights, but most of them were not highlights. And for me, it felt like programming was an escape to a just universe, where the things that were guilty would get punished. In other words, my mistakes were legitimately punished because the program would fail in a completely rational and understandable way.

And when things succeeded, I was rewarded by graphical beauty or however much you can call a few pixels moving on a screen in 1982, graphical beauty. So that for me was very, very just. So there was no business. There was just this escape for me. I was a kid, you know, I was what, 16, 17. But then I started to become really successful. You know, I started to make a ton of money. And here I am, a teenager riding around London in black cabs

or going to any restaurant I want to, buying any gear that I want to. When I say gear, I'm referring to musical gear here. I didn't do drugs. So if you look at my haircuts and jumpers from back then, you might disagree. It was a very good time for a young kid who'd always been dirt poor and always been bullied. Suddenly I was on top of the world. So none of this felt like a business to me. I didn't manage a career. I didn't see a trajectory. I didn't see a future. What future does a kid see? A kid just lives in the moment. So that's what I was doing. So I lived in the moment until the money ran out. So then you had your hallelujah moment at PlayStation and said, I'm going to get that 100 hours and I'm going to change things. How did you go about it?

How did you go about it? Yeah, this is a long process, David, a very long process and a very frightening process for me, because there were two things, two aspects to this situation. The first was, given that the company had shown such faith and confidence in me, promoted me twice in a very short space of time, given me such a major profile within the organisation and outside the organisation, how do I now extricate myself from the club? You know, I'm not talking about the Freemasons here, I'm talking about a very widely recognised public body in which I've been given a great deal of credit. And here I'm about to say that I want to leave. You know, why the hell would I want to do that? So I had to be very clear

in my own mind as to why I was doing this, so that I could explain it very clearly to the people I was going to speak to who had trusted me. That was the first part. And the second part was, how do I make it happen so that I can leave? Because I had no savings. I had no property. I had no equity. I had nothing, basically. I'd had a couple of financial crises in my life that were precipitated by things that were not related to business. And so I managed to get to this ripe old age without really having a great financial plan. So I thought, okay, I need to find a way of ensuring that I'm going to be able to fund whatever work that I do. And I was able to meet people who were very trustworthy, who were able to secure that funding for my first game when I left. And it was literally a case of, I had to have faith that I was going to, when I jumped, that there would be a safety

net to catch me. It was such a huge call, I cannot tell you. But I knew I had to do it. And it was done over the period of maybe six to nine months of creating a really good story, which I believed in, which was the truth, but which was just an aspect of it to present to PlayStation. And so that I could repeat it. I mean, I wrote it all up in Ulysses on my Mac and refined it again and again and again, you know, like a presentation. What are the key points I'm going to hit on to explain why I'm doing this? Because I got to buy into this. It can't be on a whim. It can't be sentiment. This is a big deal. I could stay at PlayStation and have a really successful career,

you know, which everybody would think was a rational thing to do, or I could break away. So I remember having my meeting with Jim where I explained what I was going to do. And Jim Ryan, by the way, is the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe and also global president of sales and marketing at PlayStation now. And I regard him still as my mentor and a trusted counsel. And I was mortified of him because I held him and still hold him in the highest esteem. So I cared about his opinion. And I remember telling him I was absolutely terrified. And I said, this is why I have to do this. You know, I have to scratch this itch. I have to try and make a game. I have to,

I don't know why I have to do this, Jim, but I have to maybe prove to myself or, or someone or I don't know that I can still do this, because this is the thing that I love doing the most. And the interesting thing, David, is that I actually did try before I came to the decision to leave of finding a way to see if i could scratch this itch while i was still at playstation yeah because that would have been the best way of doing it you know sure because i you know build up your business this is what the smartest people say and i i'm sure one of you guys said it on on your podcast as well that if you can build up a business on the side and of course this is what mike did as

well right mike built up mike early built up a business on the side. And of course, this is what Mike did as well, right? Mike built up, Mike Early, built up a business on the side. People didn't like him for it, but whatever, you know, to hell with them, as far as I'm concerned. You know, someone who shows initiative in my book is a very trustworthy person who should be entrusted with even more work and even more responsibility

because, hey, they just switched on. So the right thing would have been maybe build a business on the side, try and get something going. And if it works out, then jump. And if it doesn't, then hey, you're still a corporate guy. And, you know, nothing lost, lesson learned. Yeah, but I couldn't do that. There was no way, you know, they had to have the whole of me. And to be fair, there was no way this is going to happen. I was already working crazy hours for PlayStation. You know, I was available to developers pretty much 24-7.

You know, and I say that without any hint of exaggeration. I remember speaking to developers on Skype, well, typing to developers on Skype, 11.30pm in my bed, having also been doing the same thing at 5am that same morning. So I threw everything into that. And I thought, if I start to pull back, so even though we tried to explore this, my consideration was that if I try to pull back from this in any way, what's going to happen is that it's going to affect my job at PlayStation, because it's premised on this hyper availability, which of course, It's premised on this hyper-availability, which, of course, after three or four years had become unsustainable.

It is really brave, honestly, because for a lot of people, I think, before they go independent, they start dipping their toe in the water. And maybe they – frankly, I think Jason and I would recommend that they have proven that they can earn some income from what it is that they want to do. And they've got the pieces in place where they're not going to risk shattering their life by leaving. But you jumped, brother. You just jumped. I didn't even have a contract in place. This is a crazy thing. It was done on trust.

And I would not recommend that to anybody in the world. I would not recommend it to anybody in the world. I had to make sure that everything was going to be absolutely fine the day that I left. And, you know, thank God it was fine. But please, nobody else out there do this. It took a long, long time. It took a lot of planning, a lot of consideration, a lot of question asking, reference checking, and so on. And ultimately, it turned out that the people that I was trusting were utterly trustworthy and still continue to be wonderful, wonderful people. And I'm just really glad it's worked out. But I would never ever recommend that they take the path that I did in this situation. You know, the other thing I had to count on was I had a reputation. I'd built up a good reputation.

And I guess people who were involved in trying to secure funding for other developers, myself included, wouldn't ever, you know, even if they were so inclined, and I'm not saying for a second that they would be, wouldn't want to take the risk of damaging the prospects of somebody with a good reputation. So there was that counterbalance as well to play with. But your point, David, that you would advise that people build something up slowly on the side, I think makes total sense. Because it's not just about the safety aspect. You've got to prove to yourself that you can do this. And there's no point throwing your life away to prove a point.

If you can do it on somebody else's dime, you know, something on the side. Yeah, and you also want to make sure you enjoy it because there's a big difference. Like I love woodworking, right? I don't do that much anymore because I have kids and a million podcasts and other things going on in my life, but I like making furniture. And somebody once asked me to make them a cabinet and I was in misery the whole time. And I realized this is never something I could do to make a living because I don't enjoy doing it for money. And that's something you need to find out. But I would also say that one of the reasons why you were able to jump is because 30 years in the industry and all these relationships, even though you weren't able to really float something while you were at Sony, you were able to know that, hey, I've been around the block a few times and people around here know

me. And that gives you some juice. Yeah, totally. I mean, that was definitely a factor. Let's take a little bit of a break for me to tell you about our sponsor for this episode of Free Agents. It's Equal Experts. Equal Experts is a diverse network of experienced software consultants specializing in agile delivery. Equal experts work with companies big and small all over the world to create simple solutions that address big business problems. And to get things done right, they only recruit experts. It's a different type of consultancy, not just for the clients, but for the people who work for them. The majority of equal experts consultants work with them as independent contractors in a

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To find out more, go to equalexperts.com slash freeagents. That's one word free agents thank you so much to equal experts for your support of free agents and all of relay fm when you left the intent all along was you were going to make a game and you got and you got people you got uh sort of funding lined up and that was always the intent you had a project you were leaving for not just i'm leaving because i need to go out on my own and figure out what i'm going to do but i'm leaving to do this project yeah i mean i've obviously got a lifetime of ideas stored up and i'm hoping one of them sticks so there has been a long period of prototyping and experimenting i had more a philosophy that i built up of

of video gaming that i wanted to explore and we'll find out i guess before too long whether that philosophy is merit worthy in any way so i wanted to i i follow you on twitter i see your tweets um and it's led me to have i've've got questions for you. So let me ask you. So I want to ask about the Sheshed, your garden shed, which is your workspace. Tell me about your workspace. Tell me about setting it up and what's in it and how you use it. Okay. So for me, environment is absolutely critical. Control of environment is absolutely critical. So I'm deeply affected by noise. So I need a quiet environment. But here's another interesting thing. I love working in coffee shops

as well. For some reason, the ambient chatter, because it's predictable, seems to work really well. I prefer that to absolute silence in a public space. But in a private space, I like to have absolute silence. I don't know the psychology of that. Never looked into it. Don't care. It works for me. So I'll take that.

But the Sharshed is very finely tuned and balanced. There are still a few things I'd like to do to it. I have a Herman Miller desk, which I bought on auction. It's from 1971. And it was designed by Protz, I believe. And it is just the most beautiful hunk of zebra wood you would ever see. And just to touch it in the mornings, you know, I come in at 5 a.m. usually. And I'm sorry to admit this publicly, but I caress it before I sit down.

It makes me feel good, you know. I have several rituals. One of them is to caress my desk, just run my hand across that beautiful piece of finely designed zebra wood, and then I sit down. I have a very special chair. It's a kapiskus. It's made by a Scandinavian company company i think that might actually be the name of the scandinavian company and it's excellent it helps with the circulation in my um in my hamstrings because normal chairs because over 34 years of typing my body has contorted into this

most obscene shape where i'm permanently hunched, my shoulders are rounded, my knees are bent, my lower back is gone, you know. So this chair helps relieve me of some of those bad habits and supports me at correct position. The most important investment you can make is a chair. The second most important investment you can make is any old block of anything that will raise your monitor up to high height. So that was important. So desk and chair. I have an iMac.

And then I have a really nice, I'm not sure, this is a family show, so I won't pronounce the name of the company that makes the audio gear that the wonderful Marco Arment recommended. But I got this beautiful headphone preamp stack and a pair of HiFiMan headphones that Marco recommended, and they transformed my life. You know, I put those on and I don't even feel that they're on, but they're open-backed headphones. And I have several things that I continually run through. So I have this website called Brain FM that I listen to. And it basically runs these waveforms that are relaxing. There are different ones for whether you want to be focused or not. And that works really well for me. Sometimes I'll have that on for two hours at a whack and it will be absolutely fantastic. Is this the kind of detail that you're interested in, by the way? Sure. I'm fascinated by this and the fact. So was that a workspace for you before? Was that

your office before? Or did you make changes or set it up when you went out on your own? I set it up to this specification in the run up to my departure when I knew I was definitely leaving. Before I had my Herman Miller, I had a standard secondhand eBay desk, which cost me about, I don't know, 50 pounds or something, which served me fine. But now that's my PC desk. The PC can have the 50 pound desk.

The iMac sits on Herman Miller. Thank you very much. Johnny would be proud. I think so. I hope so. I think so. Now you mentioned 5am. So I'm curious about your routines. And now that you're on your own, what your routines are. I've also seen you working all some all nighters. So I'm kind of curious about that. But what's your normal? What's your normal routine? 5am? Do you that's alarm set for 5am? Get up and go and go out into the shed and start work immediately?

What do you do? It varies. It's anywhere from 4.30 to 5.30, the alarm. And within half an hour of waking, I will be in the shed. And the early morning is a very precious time because the whole world is silent. It's extremely peaceful. There are no neighbors awake. There are no dogs barking. The internet, for some reason, is not as noisy as usual. I try not to tune into the West Coast because that's still chattering away. So I try

and avoid as many distractions as possible. And I go through just some rituals. You know, as a Muslim, I'm required to pray before sunrise. So that happens at some point. I enjoy meditating as well. And although I don't meditate as long as I'd like to, I mean, they recommend 20 minutes. I don't know who they are, but they presumably of authority recommend 20 minutes.

I'll do five minutes of meditation. And by that, I'm just talking about bringing my attention to my breath. Mindfulness. Yeah, mindfulness. Here's the other thing with mindfulness is I try and bring it to just about every activity that I do. It's something that I've been doing for quite some time. It doesn't always work out. Sometimes you lose yourself in the flow. but every time you bring yourself back, it's just wonderful. You just feel so much more poised and able to deal with what you need to deal with. It's becoming a joke on the show about us getting into hippie stuff, but somebody taught me once, if you want to learn mindfulness, every time the phone rings, ask yourself if you were actually thinking about what you were doing at the moment the phone rang. It's a great way to keep yourself in check.

Yeah, and now we've got the Apple Watch telling us to breathe, which, funnily enough, actually serves as the modern equivalent of the phone ringing. I have to confess to not being mindful whenever the watch reminds me to breathe. But to set yourself up with a few good habits at the beginning of the day, a little bit of simple exercise, some breathing exercises, which I did long before Apple Watch ever told me to do breathing exercises, some simple stretching exercises, you know, nothing too heavy. I'm

literally talking about a routine of 10-15 minutes. I'll do my gratitude list, which I know to some people might sound a bit corny. But it's not so much a the secret thing as it is a case of reminding myself why I'm doing all of this. You know, the things that I'm grateful for. And I generally write out my goals, my life goals. I'll write those out. I also write out my day goals. Normally, I write my day goals out the night before, and I'll do weekly goals on the Sunday evening.

But in the morning, I'll remind myself of what I want to try and achieve during the day. You're writing that on paper? Yes. That's a big switch. So the gratitude list and the life goals list I tend to do on day one. But everything else I'll do in a Rhodia notepad with Twisby stub fountain pen. Because I, you know, there is something I've always loved the act of physical writing. And I was finding myself using day one an awful lot and realizing that it was just disappearing into this digital bit bucket,

you know, might as well send it to dev slash null. Because once it's in there, the only way you're ever going to think about anything like that again, is if day one reminds you right when it does its yearly reminders, and what good is it to you then except memory lane. So the interesting thing about i find about writing in a journal with physical handwriting is you can flick through the pages very quickly and just by the shape of what you've written be reminded of something you're not reading the words but you let's say for example i i'm writing an idea about a video game um i might flick back and i think it was roughly around this time and I'll flick back maybe 15,

20 pages and I'll think, ah, that's it. And I won't have read it, but I'll recognise the way I was writing at the time, bigger flowing letters or very tight cramped letters. They'll all be hints, you know, how far up and down I've written, how much spacing I've used. All of that physicality is lost when you go to a digital journal. So that's a change I've consciously made over the last, I'd say, I don't know, two years that has affected the way that I get things done. So that morning ritual is really important, sets me up for the rest of the day. And I start to tackle my highest priority task before breakfast, before the family is awake. All right.

And so that's how you break it up, is that you have your morning rituals and then you have a productive period before breakfast. And breakfast is now everybody's awake and you can go back inside and have breakfast with the family. That's right. Which is something that I couldn't do before. That's getting people off to school and work and whatever. And then when that's complete,

then you'll go back out and have a second period of work. Is that how it works? That's right. So I'll be back into the shed, usually around half past eight. So breakfast is usually a one hour period, a 45 minute period, usually between 7.40 and 8.30, 7.45 to 8.30, something like that. And it's just time with the family. You know, that's all it is. And then back in the shed. And the next period goes on through till about lunchtime.

Might be punctuated by the odd pu-erh tea. Sometimes I'll have some coffee. But usually I'll only have two coffees a day, no more than that. Otherwise, I could drink coffee like nobody's business and it wouldn't do me any good. Now, how much of that time do you spend working with other people? Is it mainly solitary work at this point? It's mainly solitary, yeah. How's that affecting you? Because you were at a big company and you had lots of people to talk

to and now you're on your own and you're alone. Does that bother you? No, I'm a loner. I'm a loner. I'm an introvert. And I spent most of my childhood in my head and in science fiction books. So actually, it's a very familiar place. Though what happened, you're very astute to identify this, David, because for the last few years at PlayStation, I fixed that. So I became a lot more approachable, a lot more friendly.

You know, these were deliberate changes that I made to my personality because I knew I had serious flaws that weren't helping me in the company or elsewhere for that matter. So I fixed all of those things over a period of, I'd say, a year in 2011. So I fixed all of those things over a period of, I'd say, a year in 2011. And as a result, made a ton of friends inside and outside of PlayStation the way I make up for that is I have several other sideline activities, which I also was very careful to ensure would be in my schedule. One of those is a consultancy to the Spanish office of PlayStation, so I go to Madrid usually once a month to mentor a whole bunch of startup developers who are being incubated in Madrid. And that's wonderful. So I get to share my experiences and knowledge and give advice and so on to some up-and-coming developers in Madrid. So it's a nice way of giving back and also being in touch with a

bunch of cool people. And also I have my relationships with the RelayFM team, which I see as my second family after PlayStation now. And that's fantastic. I mean, we rarely physically meet, but the virtual meetings feel very lively. And people within the RelayFM network have such personality. It's wonderful. So I enjoy that. It's almost like the personality jumps out of the Slack page or jumps out of the podcast. It's really cool. I find myself, when I'm feeling down,

sometimes I will just intentionally go into the Relay Slack for a half hour and just shoot the breeze with folks, and it always makes me feel better. Yeah. That's my water cooler, too, for sure. Wonderful. So I'm glad I'm not the only one. I tend not to post there too much, but I will often read

and it will make me smile just seeing the personalities pop off the page. So I really enjoyed that. I have a few other things. I'm a non-exec director on the board of Double Eleven, who are, for me, one of the best developers in the world.

And that's really great. So I often speak with them. And once in a while, we'll meet up with them as well. So my solitary life is punctuated by some very, very cool things. Yeah, okay. Now with the 5am schedule, I want to talk about that just for one more minute. That is very early, right? You still need to get enough sleep to get things done. And Jason was pointing out that sometimes it seems like you don't sleep. How does the day end for you and how do you handle that? That is sort of the way I would put it. The biggest problem I have is I'm so excited about my new life that I tend to overdo it.

And the other thing is, because there's just one of me, I realize that the first couple of years are going to be really important and I need to get some momentum going. I need to learn a lot of things. I'm a long way behind. There are people who are way younger than me, way fitter than me in this game, who are likely to also be

far more talented than me. So I've got a lot to make up for. But having said that, I also appreciate that one of the upsides of being my age is that experience should have taught me by now that sleep is actually pretty important. And from time to time, I've been guilty of neglecting that. I'm actually on holiday today. Yesterday was the end of a period of brutally hard work. I mean, I'd been pushing myself very hard. And before my body decided to break down and tell me in no uncertain terms that it was not up to work, I decided, you know what, let's just ease off the pedal just for a few days, because it's good for you so guilty as charged gentlemen sometimes i i do overwork but you know for me a normal day is 5 a.m to 9 p.m

wow and and when i say 5 a.m to 9 p.m it's not all work it's punctuated by three meal times one of the reasons i did this and i've i've never lost sight of this is to have meal times with family so i have breakfast i have lunch ialtimes with family. So I have breakfast, I have lunch, I have dinner with family, pretty much every single day. I think the only exceptions have been when I travel, or when I have an exceptionally intense deadline. And that can have happened no more than half a dozen times in the time since I've left. So that's really cool. And then other than that, I would say pretty much, yeah yeah pretty much all of that has been work and work is broken up into so many different activities so the intense stuff earlier in the day the more thoughtful stuff later in the day podcasting usually happens either lunchtime or late in the

day so it doesn't break up my other activities and and so on i i find it very easy once i've begun to build up some momentum to keep that going but i'm definitely very bad at not getting enough sleep and i'm constantly being told off about this and for for long long periods you know for years at a time when i was at playstation i was getting by in four or five hours of sleep a night and i kind of i'm a bit better now so it's more five or six hours, but really I need more than that. So yeah, yeah, guilty as charged. It strikes me though, that that's part of the trade that you that you have made is this family time and you can you can actually have all of that family time that you talked about earlier about calculating the time that you

could reclaim. And it sounds very much like you're breaking your day up into very clear segments, which is something that I found in my two years of doing this now that has been valuable is that I can switch. There are different kinds of work, even though you can view it as monolithic, that there are really different sorts and you can slot those sorts in and it gives you sort of diversity through your day. You've got this work in the morning and then you've got a meal and then you've got a different kind of work and then you have a meal and then you have a different kind of work and it makes the day not meal, and then you have a different kind of work. And it makes the day not seem endless, like some of my old work days used to seem where it was the monotony of it was almost the thing that made it seem like such a long day. Right. So when you're your own boss, you have so

many different hats to wear. And the thing about being in a corporation is that other people are wearing those hats. And sometimes they're wearing those hats. And you know damn well those hats don't fit, that you could probably put on their hat and do a much, much better job of what they're doing. So suddenly when you're in charge and when you can wear whichever hat you want, some of those hats actually, you know, you think, well, yeah, I could have done a better job. But do I really want to? Maybe I should subcontract this.

Okay, I'll get an accountant. I'm rubbish at books. So let's do that. I can do legal agreements. But, you know, there this guy at RelayFM called David Sparks, maybe I should ask him for a favour, you know, he knows how to do this stuff a lot better than me. Not that I would ask you, David, I know you're busy. But you know, what the great thing about working for yourself is you can work with people that you like and respect in every sphere of your life. You don't have to rely on people who might perhaps slow you down when you're in a large corporation,

or perhaps they don't like you for some reason. Maybe you're nice to them and they don't like you. I try to get on with everyone, but let's face it, it's always going to be kind of clash of working styles when you're working in a company, and you're always going to It's always going to be kind of clash of working styles when you're working in a company. And you're always going to want something slightly different, maybe. I don't know. I just think that when you're able to wear your own hats, you get to a point where you think, okay, I like doing this. I'm going to own this.

I don't like this. And I know exactly the sort of person who does like it and who would do it like I want it. Maybe not exactly like I want it, but close enough that I don't ever have to worry about this again. All right, so here's a final question for you that is about what has surprised you? What have you found surprising and what have you found difficult, I would say, in being an independent worker? What are the things that have surprised you

and challenged you in your time out on your own? The biggest surprise, it's a really rather mundane thing, but the biggest surprise I found was that just the act of going to work, how much exercise I was getting, which I'm no longer getting. For example, just the energy required to get ready in the morning for work, to walk literally from the car to down the stairs to the train, the activity of walking from the train station and so on, you know, all of that stuff, which you just dismiss, just like you dismiss the time it takes to go to work. You kind of dismiss the exercise that comes with it as well. So the pounds I've put on since not getting that exercise has surprised me. I figure I probably walked 30 or 40 minutes a day when I was commuting.

Yeah. It's actually increased for me because my wife and I now take these walks together and it's actually good for me. But I can see how you would lose that if you're used to, especially with the commute. Well, I had to create a new new routine a new routine to replace that because yeah yeah yeah that makes total sense you do you literally have to schedule in stuff that would otherwise happen as a matter of routine it's it's like any other habit right you you stack one habit on another to make sure that it actually happens and you schedule it here's the thing if you don't

schedule stuff that you have to do it kind of just gets pushed to the end of the day and by the end of the day because you're self-employed you you're a free agent, you know, it just doesn't get done because work always takes priority. Anything else that surprised you or that's been, what's the most difficult, what's the single most difficult thing that you've had to deal with since you went independent? The single most difficult thing has been I don't get to talk to people who I really respect face to face as much. So there was a lot more face to face interaction with my team, with my peers, with other team members. And that despite earlier saying I'm quite comfortable being a loner, I do actually miss that. I didn't think I would miss it as much as I have, but I do miss it. It hasn't had an enormous psychological effect on me. But one thing I noticed recently, which I asked about on Twitter, was I realized I wasn't laughing as much as I used to.

And this is serious. I mean, deadly serious, because, you know, human beings are incredibly social creatures. There's a part of us that still has this primitive brain that needs to be part of a troop, right? And so we laugh a lot. It's really important. It actually makes us feel physically better. In fact, there are studies that show laughter can actually have beneficial effect that goes way beyond what you might expect just from the day-to-day physiology side of things. And I realized I wasn't laughing as much. So I thought, OK, well, somehow I've got to build laughter into my schedule. How do I do this?

Of course, I don't watch any TV. I need to watch some comedy. So I asked people to hit me with every single comedy show they could think of that I could watch literally as medicine. So that's something that surprised me because I don't have so much personal contact. I used to laugh all the time. I was very well known within PlayStation for having infectious laughter.

I don't think it was infectious in a good way, by the way. It's just, it used to have this really weird resonant quality and people laughed as a result of it, which is great because it kind of spread across the office. But I don't do as much of that as I used to. So that's been a big surprise. So that, again, needs to be compensated for. All right. So when you first left, you did Shawshank Redemption, you spread your arms and twisted in the circles in the backyard. Now you've been out and gone a while. Are you still doing that?

Yes, I still am. It's because this is exactly what I wanted. You know, I was literally saying this to my wife. I think it was day before yesterday that I'm loving this. This is exactly what I wanted. You know, something happens and it might not seem positive in a family aspect, but you're there for it. And, you know, my wife commented and I said, well, this is what I wanted. This is exactly what I wanted. I'm there when this is happening. Because it's very important for a father to be there when these things happen. Because, you know, you're going to look back at the end of your life and you're going to say, were you there for this event or for this person?

And I want to be able to say yes. Well, that's a pretty good reason to make the move. Yeah. Yeah, I think we both feel exactly like we've been where you are as well. So welcome. We'll all high five virtually because we're all in our own little workspace by ourselves right now. Thank you so much for having this conversation. Like I said,

it really reminds me of a lot of things that brought back a lot of feelings that I had when I was leaving my job too. It's nice to, I know some of those feelings

are difficult feelings, but it's nice to know that I'm not the only one who had them or has them. And so that's been great too to hear that from you. Thank you so much. My absolute pleasure.

Thank you for having me on. So people can find you on Twitter. You are Shahid Kamal on on twitter we'll also put it in the show notes and of course they should listen to remaster which is a show with you and federico and mike on relay fm about guess what games as it should be um so back to the shed for more work and the shah shed absolutely and uh and we'll be back in two weeks for another edition of free agents thanks to everybody out the shed for more work and the shot shed. Absolutely. And, uh, and we'll be back in two weeks for another edition of free agents. Thanks to everybody out there for listening.

You can find us relay.fm slash free agents. And until next time, David pleasure as always. Yeah. We'll see you next time. Thank you.